You remember the old "anti-gay pastor/politician turns out to be gay" thing? It seems it's a real thing

Well, it looks like it's not just irony coming along a little too often. It seems it's a real thing. See this paper ("Is homophobia associated with homosexual arousal?"). The abstract says:

The
authors investigated the role of homosexual arousal in exclusively
heterosexual men who admitted negative affect toward homosexual
individuals. Participants consisted of a group of homophobic men (n =
35) and a group of nonhomophobic men (n = 29); they were assigned to
groups on the basis of their scores on the Index of Homophobia (W. W.
Hudson & W. A. Ricketts, 1980). The men were exposed to sexually
explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosexual, and
lesbian videotapes, and changes in penile circumference were monitored.
They also completed an Aggression Questionnaire (A. H. Buss & M.
Perry, 1992). Both groups exhibited increases in penile circumference to
the heterosexual and female homosexual videos. Only the homophobic men
showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli. The
groups did not differ in aggression. Homophobia is apparently associated
with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either
unaware of or denies.

(Short answer: Yes. The guys that aren't turned on by gay porn aren't homophobes. Actual straight guys don't seem to be the biggest problem. It's the guys that secretly think you're hot in those cut-off shorts that you have to really watch out for.)

So the next time you see that pastor or right wing christian politician screaming about the gays ... and you're thinking "oh, I bet he's secretly gay", well, maybe that's not such a silly bet.

Edit: Yeah, it's an old paper - but I've never seen it before, nor even seen any academic support for the effect. One wonders why this doesn't give them pause before launching the polemics.